URGENT - GeForce3/Powerstrip/MAME Res tool not work w/ 25"?

[MartyNg]

Win98SE w/GeForce3->JPAC->Wells Gardner 25" (horizontal)
MAME .106
MAMEWAH 1.61

I have run the MAME resolution tool AND powerstrip following instructions exactly, and just about all of the games I've tried seem to work perfectly, and the picture quality is great. However, I cannot get all of the screen for MAMEWAH or any games to display. I always see only the top 1/2 or 2/3rds of the screen. , and everything is stretched vertically too big for the screen.

This may or may not be related (noob alert!), but I've noticed that when I add hwstretch = 1 when I generate the .ini files with the resolution tool, the games run fine. However, if I don't use hwstretch, the games go out of sync on the arcade monitor. Why would hwstretch make a difference? Does this really change the resolution? I thought it just stretched across pixels or something.

So, the main questions is...why does everything hang way off the bottom of the screen? (While I am quite the noob, yes, I did adjust the V-Size on the monitor.)   

Any ideas?

[MartyNg]

I feel like I'm one tiny parameter away from getting the games to fit on the screen. Would an arcadeVGA solve my problem? Or would I still have to find this one parameter? (If all of the games load fine and look great with my GeForce3, does that mean the ArcadeVGA will not bring me much benefit other than possibly looking a little better?) I'd hate to spend the money on the ArcadeVGA and then see someone respond to this thread telling me all I had to do was change parameter A and parameter B!

[MartyNg]

-MESSAGE DELETED-

[MartyNg]

I've got a new clue for this mystery. I discovered the OSD option in Powerstrip, so I've been turning that on to see what happens.

It looks like all signals to my arcade monitor are going at 640x480. It doesn't matter what game I'm playing, even though I have all the .ini files created and in the right place. Shouldn't the number on the display match the resolution of the game in the .ini file, or the resolution actually internal to mame, leaving the actual display at 640x480 all the time?

[MartyNg]

Another thing....I have uninstalled and reinstalled several different versions of powerstrip. I wonder if it's possible that something messed up in the registry!

[MartyNg]

Bump!

I don't believe no one has any pointers here! Paypal bucks to anyone that can help me get this working! 

[releasedtruth]

Man, you've got it rough. I'm not that far into my build to help, but whatever you learn may help us both!

[MartyNg]

Seriously guys.....none of you have any ideas what I'm doing wrong? Am I missing the obvious and people are simply ignoring me? My cabinets are taking up a lot of room in my basement for not doing anything! 

[wpcmame]

Start mame with the -v parameter

e.g. mame gauntlet -v

Mame will then list all resolutions available and also say which one it selected.
something like
320x240x60
640x480x60
800x600x60
...

You can then try to force it to use a specific resolution by doing

mame gauntlet -r (one of the resolutions above)

[MartyNg]

No matter what I do, all the games still seem to load at 640x480! (According to the Powerstrip on-screen display)

PLEEEEEASE HELP ME! I'm begging! I'm having about 50 people over in a few weeks for a housewarming party, and this cabinet, if working, will be a SMASH HIT!  Everyone's looking forward to playing it all night, and I'm getting a little nervous. I'm running out of time! Help!! 

Could the powerstrip OSD not be correct? Here's my -v when running metal Slug 4:

C:\Mame>mamepp mslug4 -verbose
Parsing mame.ini : N/A
Parsing mamepp.ini : N/A
Parsing neogeo.ini : N/A
Parsing mslug4.ini : N/A
SSE2 supported
Using DirectInput 7
Keyboards=1  Mice=0  Joysticks=0  Lightguns=0
Primary buffer: 44100 Hz, 16 bits, 2 channels
Enumerating display monitors... Found: \\.\DISPLAY1 (primary)
Screen name not specified, using primary display monitor
Hardware stretching supported
Best mode = 800x600x16 @ default Hz
Primary surface created: 800x600x16 (R=0000f800 G=000007e0 B=0000001f)
Blit surface created: 338x226x16 (R=0000f800 G=000007e0 B=0000001f)
Average FPS: 46.708661 (269 frames)
Sound buffer: overflows=12 underflows=0

[Silver]

Hi,

Based on your verbose output, mame is choosing the 640x480 resolution itself. Or in the case of the mamepp mslug4 -verbose, it is choosing 800x600.

Can you print the output when you try:

mamepp mslug4 -verbose -r 320x240


Note, for mame to use ANY resolutions lower than 640x480, they need to be available to WINDOWS. Powerstrip is capable of doing this - you need to create custom resolutions, save them, powerstrip will add them to windows (and tell you that you need to reboot).

Note that for powerstrip to do this, I believe the gfx card must support custom resolutions. But I think it tells you this.. There is some info on creating custom resolutions here:

http://forums.entechtaiwan.net/viewtopic.php?t=24

The reason your games look ok is because mame is scaling all of them to 640x480 (this is what hwstretch is doing).

Also note that the Jpac will divide 31Khz signals to 15Khz - and yours is the 2nd post I've read today with someone with a jpac only seeing 1/2 the screen. Not sure if this is what the jpac does with 31Khz signals (what do you see during boot up time?) or what you are sending....

[MartyNg]

I just went ahead and ordered an ArcadeVGA v2. I'll see how that works before I mess around with powerstrip anymore!


I'll post my results once that's installed!